Illuminating Chinese Classics

In this episode on the Three Character Classic (三字经), we talk about the nine generations of relations that make up one’s family, in the traditional definition of the word. There’s a lot of “this person begats that one, who begats etc.” in this episode, so this is one episode where, if your eyes glaze over, your hosts won’t take offense. The三字经 was written by the Song Dynasty (宋朝) scholar Wang Yinglin (王应麟). This 1,134 character text was one of the first textbooks used by students, and provided lessons on education, morality and ethics, science, literature, and history.